Wednesday, October 02, 2013

No, there’s no secret backroom negotiations. It’s merely the will of the American people being exercised.

You see, nobody expected the volume of people who wanted – no, needed – to sign up for health insurance. “Needed,” because under the old system insurance was unaffordable, healthcare doubly so.

This is an initiative that is wildly popular, despite polling you may have seen, precious few of which segregate people who don’t like Obamacare because they don’t like Obama from liberals who don’t like Obamacare because it doesn’t go far enough.

Or about as many people as voted for President Obama in the past two elections.

About a fifth of the House of Representatives is in statistically safe districts, but numbers like these have to be terrifying the more moderate Republicans like, yes, Boehner. This would explain why some unusual suspects from the GOP have pushed back against the extremists, like Peter King of Long Island.

Normally a right-wing crackpot, particularly when it comes to terrorism (unless its initials are “IRA,” of course), King is facing an electorate at home that has seen jobs float off in the breeze of the 2008 fiscal crisis, and pushed farther by the winds of Superstorm Sandy. These folks have to scrape by to feed their families and try to hold onto their houses, and the last thing they need is a $7,000 insurance bill each year.

King is in real trouble at home if he postures on this.

He has to balance this with his announced run for the 2016 Republican nomination. Shades of Rudy Giuliani, but this man is in for a rude awakening.

Still, between the overloaded servers showing the unbridled enthusiasm of the American people – even in states that refused to lift a finger to implement Obamacare – will give Teabaggers pause. And a clear sense of how out of touch they really are. It is settled law, debated in Congress, in elections and in the courts. Eat it raw, suckers!

Welcome to socialism, rightwingers! This is what democracy looks like.

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing